No Polarization From Partisan News: Over-Time Evidence From Trace Data

Abstract

Many blame partisan news media for polarization in America. This paper examines the effects of liberal, conservative, and centrist news on affective and attitude polarization. To this end, we rely on two studies that combine two-wave panel surveys (N1 = 303, N2 = 904) with twelve months worth of web browsing data submitted by the same participants comprising roughly thirty-eight million visits. We identify news exposure using an extensive list of news domains and develop a machine learning classifier to identify exposure to political news within these domains. The results offer a robust pattern of null findings. Exposure to partisan and centrist news websites—no matter if it is congenial or crosscutting—does not enhance polarization. These null effects also emerge among strong and weak partisans as well as Democrats and Republicans alike. We argue that these null results accurately portray the reality of limited effects of news in the “real world.” Politics and partisan news account for a small fraction of citizens’ online activities, less than 2 percent in our trace data, and are nearly unnoticeable in the overall information and communication ecology of most individuals.

Most users do not follow political elites on Twitter; those who do show overwhelming preferences for ideological congruity

“…This bleak finding adds to some other evidence that many Twitter users do not follow news media ( 16 ) or members of Congress ( 13 ). It also aligns with the aforementioned work showing low absolute levels of news consumption online ( 47 , 48 ) and on social media more specifically ( 44 ), which users use primarily for entertainment ( 37 ). In our data, the following of celebrities is greater than that of any politician, pundit, or a news media organization: 70.7% of users follow at least one celebrity (athlete, musician, actor, etc.)…”

“…This is the case on social media: News makes up only 4% of News Feed on Facebook ( 44 ), public affairs more broadly comprise 1.8% of the average News Feed of college students ( 45 ), and only about 1 in 300 outbound clicks from Facebook correspond to substantive news ( 46 ). This is also the case online more broadly: Only between 2% ( 47 ) and 7 to 9% ( 48 ) of all URLs visited by large samples of Americans are news domains, and across mobile and desktop, news comprises only 4.2% of total online consumption ( 49 ).…”

Non-news websites expose people to more political content than news websites: Evidence from browsing data in three countries

“…This is especially the case in the online environment, which offers nearly unlimited content and unprecedented possibilities to customize individual media diets. In fact, news makes up only 4% of News Feed on Facebook (Zuckerberg, 2018), only between 2% (Wojcieszak, de Leeuw, et al, 2021) and 7%-9% (Guess, 2021) of all URLs visited by large samples of Americans are news domains (Stier, Mangold, Scharkow, & Breuer, 2022), and -across mobile and desktopnews comprises only 4.2% of total online consumption (Allen et al, 2020).…”

“…Because this work relies on largely unreliable self-reports of (incidental) (soft) (news) exposure (Prior, 2009;Thorson, 2020), it cannot accurately portray online political ecosystem. In turn, studies that use online traces primarily focus on partisan news use and its effects in the United States (Guess et al, 2021;Wojcieszak, de Leeuw, et al, 2021), not on political exposures outside of (partisan)news. Needless to say, partisan news attracts a small fraction of the population (Prior, 2013;Wojcieszak, de Leeuw, et al, 2021) and the U.S. is far from representative of other countries and media systems globally.…”

“…In turn, studies that use online traces primarily focus on partisan news use and its effects in the United States (Guess et al, 2021;Wojcieszak, de Leeuw, et al, 2021), not on political exposures outside of (partisan)news. Needless to say, partisan news attracts a small fraction of the population (Prior, 2013;Wojcieszak, de Leeuw, et al, 2021) and the U.S. is far from representative of other countries and media systems globally. Missing is evidence on whether users internationally actually encounter politics in ostensibly non-political spaces (e.g., an article about COVID in Women's Health magazine) and how these encounters compare to news consumption in terms of both prevalence and democratic effects.…”